YALE UNIVERSITY 



MRS. HEPSA ELY SILLIMAN 



MEMORIAL LECTURES 



In the year 1883 a legacy of eighty thousand dollars was left to the 

 President and Fellows of Yale College in the city of New Haven, to be held 

 in trust, as a gift from her children, in memory of their beloved and 

 honored mother, Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman. 



On this foundation Yale College was requested and directed to establish 

 an annual course of lectures designed to illustrate the presence and prov- 

 idence, the wisdom and goodness of God, as manifested in the natural and 

 moral world. These were to be designated as the Mrs. Hepsa Ely Silliman 

 Memorial Lectures. It was the belief of the testator that any orderly 

 presentation of the facts of nature or history contributed to the end of 

 this foundation more effectively than any attempt to emphasize the elements 

 of doctrine or of creed ; and he therefore provided that lectures on dogmatic 

 or polemical theology should be excluded from the scope of this foundation, 

 and that the subjects should be selected rather from the domains of natural 

 science and history, giving special prominence to astronomy, chemistry, 

 geology, and anatomy. 



It was further directed that each annual course should be made the basis 

 of a volume to form part of a series constituting a memorial to Mrs. 

 Silliman. The memorial fund came into the possession of the Corporation 

 of Yale University in the year 1901; and the present volume constitutes 

 the fourteenth of the series of memorial lectures. 



